Faraway Places

by Tom Spanbauer

  That night, too, there were the flies buzzing. Or maybe there weren’t; maybe it was just that haywire sound in my ears. But I think I did see them. It looked like the nigger’s hair was flying right off him, but I think it might have been flies.

  The sound—the sound the flies were making—was the worst sound yet, worse than the sound of crows, but the smell was worse than that.

  When I realized what it was that was hanging there, that it was the nigger—my Geronimo—when I saw the crows on him and heard the flies and felt those flies on my face, part of me went over by the pole fence and part of me went over by the river, to the elm tree above the pig pen. When I realized what I’d bumped into, I wasn’t just standing there under the winch and our barn’s rose window anymore. It was like I’d died and was on my way to heaven, only it wasn’t heaven where I got. It was the feeling of getting to heaven, though, like when the swing started going over onto itself, that feeling that I wasn’t in my skin anymore, of getting out of my skin, out of my circumstances, one step shy of flight.

  That’s when I went for the saddle room. I went straight to that room, made a beeline for it as soon as I was myself again, when I could walk and think. I got the key from the secret place by the red radio. I unlocked the door and opened it. I went right in, right to that secret drawer. It was locked so I took down the twelve-gauge that was hanging below the .25-20, leaving just the halo of the twelve-gauge on the wall. I blew a hole in the drawer, buckshot spraying every which way. Then I reached in there and got that secret envelope and opened it. After all those years, this is what I found:

  There were five photographs of a woman taking off her clothes; in the first photograph, she had on her coat and her hat and her high heels. In the second photograph, she had a dress on and the high heels. In the third, she just had her slip on and the high heels. In the fourth photograph, she just had her bra on and her panties on. Her nylons hooked to that part that holds them up. In the fifth photograph, she was naked.

  There was a coupon torn from a magazine to send away for a Spanish fly. Drives the female wild, it said on the coupon.

  There was a picture of naked men, seven of them, standing on a lava rock by a lake, arm in arm, smiling. I think one of them was my father and the rest were his six brothers.

  There was a photograph of four men in uniform. One of them was my father during the war, in Germany. The men in uniform were with a fifth man dressed up like a Negro woman with black on his face, smoking a cigar. The other three men and my father were looking at the man dressed up like a Negro woman, laughing and drinking beer.

  And there was a photograph of a nurse who looked like Esther Williams. She’d signed the photograph, To Joe, Always My Love, All of It, Eva, and then there was something written in German. At least it looked like German to me.

  There was a Trojan—“a contraceptive,” it said on the outside of the package.

  There was some strange-looking paper money, none of it green.

  There was the sheet music to the Perry Como song “Faraway Places.”

  There was a Holy Card with the Holy Eucharist on it that said that Joseph Robert Weber had received his First Holy Communion. Along with the Holy Card was a photograph of my father—he was just a kid—standing next to his mother. Grandma Ruth looked younger but just as fat. My father was wearing a suit. There was a German shepherd dog in the background in front of a house that needed paint. At the bottom of the photograph was written: My First Holy Communion Day, 1925.

  There was another photograph of my father in a suit with wide lapels and baggy pants. He stood in front of that same house, still in need of paint. My father was older in that one. The German shepherd was older too. My father’s hand was on the dog’s head. Me and Fritz on my Holy Confirmation Day, 1933, was written under the photograph, and this was written there too: My Holy Confirmation Name: John, it said. That’s what it said and I wondered if my father had chosen the same John as I had—the St. John who wrestled with the devil.

  That was it, at least I thought that was it, and then I saw a piece of silky cloth, a pink color, that had dropped out. I picked it up. It was like an envelope. I opened it and pulled out three more photographs and a blue ribbon like the kind you can win at the Blackfoot State Fair.

  The blue ribbon said Best Butterfly Collection, St. Veronica’s School, Eighth Grade.

  Two of the photographs were of my mother: one was of her with a different hairstyle. In that she was wearing a real short dress. She was pulling up that short skirt even higher. Under the photograph she had written, Gosh! Yah! Boy! Mary.

  The second was a photograph of my father kissing my mother at their wedding.

  The third was of my father, smiling proudly, holding a little baby in his arms. Holding me.

  And then I heard something. I looked up and saw my father standing in the doorway. He said: “What the hell are you doing?”

  I looked him in the eye. That was the hardest thing—looking into my father’s eyes as he stood there in the doorway. There wasn’t any secret anymore and there weren’t any rules anymore and I was looking into his eyes.

  My father started walking toward me, like he always did, like he was the one who knew it all, and he repeated his question, what the hell are you doing here?

  I hauled off and hit him as hard as I could with the back of my hand.

  My father stepped back, dazed, and wiped the blood from his mouth. Then looked at the blood on his hand, as if he couldn’t believe it was real.

  “Don’t hate me, Jake—I was drunk,” my father said.

  My father never called me Jake, or Jacob, or Jacob Joseph, or John. He never called me son. He called me Jake when he talked to other people, but to me it was just do this or do that. “I hated you before you were drunk,” I said, and then I called him that name, called him motherfucker. “Motherfucker,” I said.

  My father looked down at the floor, at all his pictures, at his ribbon, at his Trojan, at the Spanish fly coupon, at the man dressed up like a Negro woman, at the Holy Eucharist, at Eva, at Gosh! Yah! Boy!

  His chest was rising up and going down fast, just the way it would before he explodes when he gets mad. I still had the gun, though I didn’t know if it was loaded still. My father just stood there breathing hard and deep and looking at the floor.

  Then my father kind of slumped down to his knees; his head was only inches from the barrel of the twelve-gauge. He picked up his blue ribbon in his big hairy hand, then picked up the picture of him and his dog Fritz on that day in 1933 when his new name was John.

  The picture of him naked with his six brothers was right by my foot. I kicked it over to him. He picked it up and looked at it.

  My father sat back on his feet and looked up at me. Then he picked up another photograph. I knew which one it was and wished he wouldn’t have picked that one up—the one of him holding his little baby. He brought the photograph up close to his face, as though he couldn’t quite make it out. With his chest going up and down like that, my father started to cry. He heaved a big sigh and looked up the barrel of the gun at me. His eyes were looking at me but they weren’t really; they were looking at something, for something, that wasn’t there anymore.

  “How did it all happen at Endicott’s that night?” my father finally asked.

  “You wanted a fair fight, like a man,” I said. “And Endicott whipped you. You dropped your guard,” I said.

  “When did the nigger kill him, do you know?” my father asked.

  “How do you know it was the nigger who killed him?” I asked.

  “The sheriff told me,” my father said. “At first they thought Endicott died of natural causes and that his dogs got to him after that. But then they picked up the nigger on the highway, walking down the middle of the highway, with hardly nothing on and Endicott’s whistle around his neck and part of Endicott’s scalp hanging from his belt.”

  “Those people just got a nose for trouble,” I said. And then I said, “He saved your life.”r />
  “Who saved my life?”

  “The nigger, Geronimo, saved your life.”

  “Geronimo?” my father said.

  “That’s his name, the nigger’s name,” I said.

  “Saved my life?” my father said.

  “He shot Endicott with his bow and arrow. Endicott was going for his dogs to sic them on you and turn you into what they turned that woman Sugar Babe into, but Geronimo stopped him, shot him in the eye. I saw it all,” I said.

  The sky started to come in the room then, black sky, no stars.

  “How’d Endicott get back in the house then?” my father said.

  “We put him in there, and then covered our tracks. Then we covered yours.”

  “And both of you carried me back here?” my father said.

  “Yes,” I said. “In Old Glory. But I didn’t make it all the way.” I heard the screen door slam.

  “Mom found us both lying there by the back door in the rain wrapped up in the flag,” my father told me.

  “She said it was a miracle.” He looked at the ground and shook his head. “Why?” he said.

  “Why what?” I said.

  “Why did he do it, the nigger—”

  “Geronimo,” I said.

  “—Geronimo,” my father said. “Why did he do it?”

  “She was his mother,” I said. “Sugar Babe was his mother. It got real quiet in the saddle room then, my father’s chest rising up and going down, “We’ll have to tell the sheriff,” he finally said.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because maybe we can get Geronimo off—for saving my life.”

  “You don’t know?” I said.

  “Know what?” my father said.

  I hung the twelve-gauge back up on the wall, inside its halo.

  I stepped aside, holding the door open for my father. I let him walk through the back door of the barn and into the navy-blue night. I let my father step right into the nigger. I let him bump into him just the way I did.

  I’d taken the flashlight from its halo on the wall, and when my father bumped into the nigger hanging there from the winch, I shined the light into my father’s face. Then I shined it into the nigger’s.

  My father’s face was against the nigger’s crotch. My father tried to get his balance. He had to touch the nigger with his hands to get his balance back. My father tried not to touch the nigger, but he had to. It was either that or fall.

  And then my father looked up to see just what it was he’d bumped into. I helped him by shining the flashlight his way.

  It was more horrible than even I thought it was with the flashlight on like that. Even the smell was worse when you could see it.

  I felt good that it was horrible, then. For my father’s sake.

  I watched my father start to make funny noises: grunts and sighs and little-girl screams. I watched him jump away like he was on a pogo stick. I watched him fall down, away from the nigger. My father was wiping his hands, trying to get that nigger’s blood off. I watched him howl and start crying again, this time loud with big sobs.

  “I didn’t know! I didn’t know! God forgive me, I didn’t know!” my father was crying.

  AFTER A WHILE my father got quiet again. He got up off his knees. Then he bent over and puked—three times. He wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve and stood up as straight as he could manage. He walked over to me, but I wasn’t afraid. He couldn’t hurt me anymore.

  But he did. My father hurt me again.

  My father just walked over and put his arms around me, just walked up to me—no problem—after all those years and grabbed on to my neck and hugged me, hugged me because he needed it. Maybe because he thought I needed it too.

  But I didn’t hug him back. Touching him was like him touching the nigger. I only held on to keep my balance.

  I was still holding the door open, and my father was still holding on to me and crying when I realized my mother was standing there in the doorway. She was a mess. Her hair was sticking up all over the place; her dress was torn. She had let herself go, like the time when the chinook first hit us. It was dark but I could see how her eye was, and my mother looked at me like she knew I was fed up with making things nice when things weren’t nice. And I knew she was fed up too.

  My mother was holding a large crucifix and Old Glory and a can of gasoline.

  My father looked at her, then at me. There we were: one man’s family.

  My mother handed me and my father shovels, and we dug the nigger’s grave right there in the corral. The digging wasn’t tough; the ground was soft below the manure. We were all quiet. The sky was everywhere. The sky went deeper and deeper the more we dug. My father started crying and had to stop shoveling twice. Both times he leaned against the shovel and said what a fool he had been. I still didn’t say anything, and neither did my mother.

  Then my mother went and got the twelve-gauge. She stood close and aimed at the lariat hanging from the winch and pulled the trigger. The crows flew off the nigger in an explosion of black wings. The sound of that shot was like the screen door slamming. The nigger fell down to the ground onto Old Glory with a sound like when you throw a sack of rotten spuds out to pigs. We dragged the Old Glory bundle to the grave and dropped it in, then covered it up with dirt. We threw dirt and manure, one shovelful at a time, on top of Old Glory, on top of the nigger, on top of Geronimo, and when we were done, my mother put the crucifix on the grave.

  I WENT TO the river and sat down by the edge. I took my boots off and my socks off and stuffed my socks in my boots and rolled up my pants legs. I waded across the shallow part to the small island of brambles and scrub elms and went around behind where no one could see me. I took off my shirt and my Levi’s and my shorts and stuffed my shorts in my pants. Then I jumped in the river, in the deep part, still only about four feet deep. I swam around naked, my first time swimming naked like that. Before, I’d always worn my shorts. This was my first time standing naked with sky all around. I washed out my Levi’s and my shirt and shorts and wrung them out. I put them back on wet and when I came back around from back there where no one could see me, I saw my mother standing in the river, water up to her knees. The skirt of her red housedress floated in a circle around her. She put her face down close to the water and cupped the water up to her face and hair. She splashed herself over and over again, then straightened up and shook her hair out, shaking her head from side to side fast with her eyes closed, water spraying from her hair.

  My mother stood there for a while, like she was trying to decide what to do, all the while looking at her hands. Then she made the sign of the cross with her right hand, her left hand pulling her hair back from her face. I knew she did that because she didn’t know what else to do. She turned and waded up to the bank and walked without turning to look at my father. He was kneeling there by the river, over by the elm tree by the pig pen. He just knelt there rubbing his hands together in the water and looking at things strange, as if he had never seen the world before.

  My mother knelt down by the grave to pray to God and the Virgin Mary, and my father—when he saw that she was kneeling down by the grave—came over and knelt down beside her. My mother’s eye told me to kneel down at the grave too.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead, I sang the heya, heya, Geronimo song and danced around and let myself go like a wild animal. I sang the heya, heya, Sugar Babe song too. The crows heard my song, and the pigeons in the barn heard, and the hawks. The river heard and so did the trees along the river. I don’t know if God heard my song, but the rest of them heard and that was enough.

  I danced and sang and I watched my mother and my father. They didn’t act like it was unusual that I was dancing. They acted like I was doing something ordinary, which surprised me a little, but then I wasn’t dancing for them to see. I didn’t care what they thought. I thought of digging up Old Glory, of crawling inside that grave my father and I had dug. I would have liked to have slept and dreamed dreams with Geronimo. But he was
already too far away.

  What I didn’t know then as I danced, watching my mother and watching my father, was how many times, uncountable times, I would live through all of this again: the chinook, the heya, heya, Geronimo and heya, heya, Sugar Babe songs, yellow stains and red flags, butterflies and dice, Black Velvet and the river, one thing always leading to another forevermore.

  MY MOTHER POURED gasoline onto the spot where the nigger had fallen onto Old Glory. She lit a match and looked at it, both eyes perfectly focused on the flame. Then she tossed the match onto the spot. Flames from that single flame blew up high with a sound, huge and forevermore like hell. The sound the barn made when the flames got to it, after my mother had sprinkled gasoline all around, was like the sound she made shaking her hair out in the river.

  The shingles were on fire, the floorboards were, even the strands of light coming down from the holes in the roof in the loft were aflame. The red radio was burning, the bag balm, and so were the milk strainers. The saddle room was on fire.

  I managed to get two of those photographs out of the saddle room before the barn blew altogether. It was a close one, but I got the two I wanted. When I walked past the toolshed, the toolshed burst into flames too. It was like war, like a bomb bursting in air, like God—too bright.

  The Oldsmobile was parked away from the house, its engine running. My father was standing around like he was drunk again on Black Velvet. He walked to the middle of the yard, watching things the way he had been watching at the river. He watched my mother walk out of the house with two big suitcases I had never seen before. She was wearing her hat, the one she didn’t wear that much anymore, the one with the pheasant feather in it. Her hair was still a mess, but she had her high heels on, but no lipstick and no nylons either. She set the suitcases down and closed the screen door tight, snugged it back into home. By the time she got to the Oldsmobile, the house blew too. She didn’t even flinch, like one thing had just led to another in a way she knew it would all along. I thought of the things in our house that were burning: the kitchen table, the beds, my father’s chair, the coffee table, the doily curtains, the medicine-cabinet mirror, the wallpaper in the hallway, my confirmation diploma, the guardian-angel picture with the kids. My mother put the suitcases in the trunk of the Oldsmobile and got in on the driver’s side, closing the door behind her.